


in one direction

by blushingsweet (sunflowered)



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, post 2018 NHL awards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 12:37:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15001031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowered/pseuds/blushingsweet
Summary: “Is that why you’re asking me to stay with you?” Nicke prods, listening to their breathing, the near-silent air conditioning. “Over the summer?”





	in one direction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Catznetsov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catznetsov/gifts).



> g!!!! happy early birthday in advance bc i'd be busy the whole of next week! i hope you'll like this w all my loving lizard heart

Everywhere they go, they’re drinking. 

“I’m hungover,” says Nicke, who wants water, who wants to keep melting into the filtered light. “I’m hungover, and Vegas is no fun in the morning.” 

“Nowhere is fun in the morning,” Sasha says, turning to flatten him with that body of his. “But will you stay here a while?” 

Nicke opens his eyes then, to Sasha’s crumpled suit, his shaven jaw. It’s hot for this time of the year, hotter than all the years that have come before them. Somewhere in their hotel room is a phone flooded with messages that he hasn’t read yet, though he has to get to it someday.

“Stay,” he repeats after Sasha. “You want us to stay here?” 

He’s shocked by Sasha’s eyes, after a moment, pale and mirthful against the bleached-white sheets. Sasha smiles at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Yes.”

“You’ve never spent the summer with me before,” says Nicke. 

“We can, for a little bit,” says Sasha. “We don’t have to keep doing the same thing, year after year.”

“We didn’t this time.”

“I know.” 

Sasha rests a hand on his jaw, where Nicke needs to start shaving. “So I’m pushing my luck. We can spend it together.” 

Nicke stills, and for a horrifying second, he feels ancient, withering. “Is there something wrong?” 

Sasha pulls his hand away, turning serious. “No,” he says. “Why? What’s wrong?” 

“No,” Nicke sighs, and wonders about refusing this little window of further happiness that Sasha wants to cloak him with. “I’m old now.”

“So am I.” 

“No,” corrects Nicke. “I don’t think you’ll ever be, you know?”

“What do you think I did?” Sasha laughs. “Drank from a fountain of youth? Should have come with us if you’re feeling senile.” 

“Not so much.” Nicke sinks into the bed, feeling Sasha’s hands underneath his shirt, the languid undoing of his buttons. He sinks his hand into Sasha’s hair, thick and shaggy and haplessly familiar. “I just want to…” 

Sasha stops. 

“Stay stagnant,” finishes Nicke, weakly. 

“I think I know what you mean.” 

“Do you.” 

“Why not?” asks Sasha. “Right now—it feels like… You’re standing in a field of flowers.” 

“That makes a little bit of sense,” Nicke allows. 

“And you want to be careful with yourself.”

Nicke thinks about it, watching the sunlight dance over Sasha’s eyebrows. His exposed cheekbones, the blunt cut of them. “Don’t we all?” 

“Of course,” Sasha softens. “Of course we do. When we lifted the Cup, I felt like I couldn’t hold myself together.”

Nicke knows that Sasha’s biding their time, and that no one knows where they’re going next, least of all themselves. “I thought this was about flowers,” he teases. 

“Shh,” hushes Sasha. “You know what it feels like, yeah?” He rubs his hand over his jaw, drawing his hand down the side of his face lazily. “How you don’t know what time it is now, or when to go. How you’re afraid?” 

“Maybe.” Nicke looks at him, harder than he means to, but Sasha only smiles at him. He turns his gaze away, down, towards his dangling collar. There’s a line where Sasha had slept on it the night before. “Like it can’t last.” 

“It won’t last,” Sasha tells him, perhaps a little unkindly. “Happiness never tastes like it does before.” 

“I don’t know how it gets better than this,” whispers Nicke. “I think that’s a little bit stupid of me.” 

Sasha leans over to him, and Nicke’s jerked back to the nights he’d spent as a teenager, angling for kisses stolen in the dead of the night, exhausted between away games. Sasha doesn’t go for it, though, just stares at him like he’s about to disappear.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sasha says, calmly. 

“So where do we go from here?” Nicke asks, a little impatiently. 

“You tell me.” 

“I don’t want to tell you,” says Nicke. “I want to stay here forever.” 

“I thought that when I was sleeping with the Cup, you know.” 

Nicke laughs at him. “I’m not good enough for you?” 

Sasha leans in, pressing their foreheads together. “You’re the only thing that’s good for me.”

“Is that why you’re asking me to stay with you?” Nicke prods, listening to their breathing, the near-silent air conditioning. “Over the summer?” 

“We can pretend like time never pass.” 

Nicke drags a hand down Sasha’s back, digging his fingers into skin, like he could turn them both into amber, somehow. “You know how dreams last forever?” 

“Yeah.”

“But you always know it ends, because you always wake up.” 

“A rude awakening?” 

Sasha laughs at him, again, his eyes closing alongside Nicke’s, because they’re both tired. “Maybe we never wake up,” says Sasha, who’s starting to drift off again from the exhaustion of contentment. “Maybe we’ll never be disappointed again.” 

“I’d like that,” Nicke says, and contemplates falling asleep this way, in Sasha’s arms forever, content with himself, if only for just a day.

 

 

“Lovers find secret places  
inside this violent world  
where they make transactions  
with beauty.”   
―Rumi 

 


End file.
